Rick Carlisle Third Quotations

The third quarter did us in, because in the first half I thought we played very intelligently and very hard. In the third quarter, they got going and we just couldn't get stops.

The second and third quarters hurt us defensively. We struggled and had some stretches where we couldn't stop them. Detroit is a team that is going to do a good job in the last play type of situations, but I'm more in tune to what happened in the second and third quarters than on the last play.

We decided to go to him early (in the third quarter) and tried to ride him. He played better and much more aggressive, but we need him to do that at the start of games.

He made a couple of great plays at the end. Great players are going to make great plays. In the grand scheme of the game, the third quarter was our undoing.

He (Redd) was phenomenal with his shot making, especially in the third and the fourth (quarters). Then all of them were hitting threes after a while. The third quarter did us in.

We knew he was somehow going to touch it, whether or not he was going to hand it off to somebody else or take the shot. We had three straight timeouts to talk about it. We did a good job on the first two plays, and the third one they got us and got an open look. We're fortunate to be going back to the hotel with a win.

We're not a very good basketball team right now. This was very disappointing. We couldn't hit a bull in the butt with a bass fiddle. The ball not going in in the third was key.

I thought defensively we were playing soft (in the first half) and not playing the type of game we needed to play to give ourselves a chance. The third quarter we came out with a lot of more aggression, and the third quarter was the key quarter.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. You play a lousy third quarter and give up a bunch of turnovers, you're going to tempt fate with that kind of play over a 12-minute period.

They got into the paint time and time again in the third quarter, and that was the story of how the game went. . . . You give up 29 points in the third and that tells you the momentum of the game, because we had put ourselves in a strong position before that.